Prace komisji nauk.pdf - Instytut Filologii Angielskiej Uniwersytetu ...

separated cognitive domain, that of social intelligence, in the early human
mind (Mithen 1999: 288).
This use of private speech can be certainly considered a semiotic internal “tool” for
organizing brains and so for manipulating, expanding, and exploring minds, a tool
that probably coevolved with another: talking to each other. 49 Both private and
public language act as tools for thought and play a fundamental role in the
evolution “opening up our minds to ourselves” and so in the emergence of new
meaning processes.
3.2. Material Culture, Artifacts, and Semiosis
Another semiotic tool appeared in the latter stages of human evolution, that played
a great role in the evolutions of primitive minds, that is in the organization of
human brains. Handaxes also are at the birth of material culture, so as new
cognitive chances can co-evolve:
- the mind of some early humans, like the Neanderthals, were constituted by
relatively isolated semiotic cognitive domains, Mithen (1999) calls different
intelligences, probably endowed with different degrees of consciousness
about the thoughts and knowledge within each domain (natural history
intelligence, technical intelligence, social intelligence). These isolated
cognitive domains became integrated also taking advantage of the role of
public language;
- degrees of high level consciousness appear, human beings need thoughts
about thoughts;
- social intelligence and public language arise.
49 On languages as cognitive artifacts cf. Carruthers (2002), Clark (1998, 2003, 2005), Norman
(1993), and Clowes & Morse (2005).
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